In the midst of countless brothels and saloons, Bughouse Square speakers ranged from complete kooks to some of the finest orators of the day
Joffre Stewart, a Bughouse regular from way back, is mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" as the man "passing out incomprehensible leaflets." At the Bughouse Square debates in 2007, fifty years after the poem, he was still at it. An anararchist, Joffre was the beatnik party's anti-candidate for Vice President (on the ticket with nominee William Lloyd Smith) in 1960.
The park in 1905. Note the "wall."
another early image
The park as it appears today.
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Featuring interviews with veterans of the park's glory days and clips from recent speeches and debates!
Washignton Square Park, between Clark and Dearborn a couple of blocks above Chicago avenue, is the oldest park still in existence in Chicago. The history of Bughouse Square begins in the 1840s, when a developer named Erasmus Bushnell left a cow pasture to the city to be used as a park. Supposedly, the will contained a provision that a wall be kept around the park - the city got around this in the 1870s by putting up a limestone wall around one foot hight.
The will is also said to have contained a provision that anyone who wanted to had to be allowed to make a speech at the park at any time, and from roughly the 1890s through the 1960s, speeches could be heard there any night when the weather was good. It quickly grew a reputation as a popular spot for wackos - hence the nickname of Bughouse Square ("bughouse" was a slang term for a mental institution).
Some of the great speakers of the day were regulars - including Clarence Darrow, Eugene Debs (socialist canditate for PResident), Lucy Parsons (anarchist labor organizers), her lover Ben Reitman (a controversial physician), Emma Goldman (an anarchist who was eventually deported to Russia), and poets Carl Sandburg and Kenneth Rexroth.
Of course, there were plenty of lesser-known characters who hung around, including Slim Brundage (founder and janitor of the College of Complexes, the "indoor bughouse square"), "One Armed" Cholly Wendorf (who had the constitution memorized), Herbert WIlliam Shaw, alias "the Cosmic Kid" (described "the first soapboxer to take his audience on philosophic flights into empyrean realms of thought"), "Weird Mary,"Willaim Lloyd Smith (beatnik anti-candidate for President).
The practice of making speeches in the park died out around 1960, though it's brought back on the last Saturday of July in the form of the Bughouse Square Debates sponsored by the Newberry Library. The park features prominently in the books The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death and The Education of Robert Nifkin by Daniel Pinkwater, who hung out in the park in his youth. Studs Terkel, who Roger Ebert calls "The greatest living Chicagoan" (a designation few would dispute) plans to have his ashes scattered there when he dies. To my knowlege, only Weird Chicago tours makes the park a regular feature on the tour route. Click above the link at the top of the page to hear the Weird Chicago radio podcast recorded at the 2007 debates!
- Adam Selzer, honorary deputy mayor of Bughouse Square
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